1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to disorders of the blood, and particularly to a spectral method for quantifying hemoglobin fragility caused by smoking that uses fluorescence spectroscopy techniques, particularly synchronous scanning spectroscopy, to measure metabolites in blood plasma.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to a webmed report and the National Institutes of Health of the United States, 90% of death by lung cancer, 80% by chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) and 17% due to heart diseases are caused by smoking tobacco in some form or the other. This is because tobacco smoke contains nicotine and 4,000 chemicals, including CO, benzene and oxidant gases. The adverse effects on health due to smoking depend upon a quantity called a pack year, which is a product of a cigarette packet and number of years of smoking.
A person who smokes one cigarette packet (of 20 in number) every day for one year is called one pack year. It is important to mention that smoking one pack per day over 10 years is more harmful than two packs for 5 years, although it means 10 pack years in both cases.
An important smoking-induced health hazard is an excessive circulation of carbon monoxide (CO) in the blood. Hemoglobin (FM) has 200 times greater affinity for CO than for oxygen (O2) so that CO easily binds to Hb, producing cherry red blood (due to abnormal elevation of carboxy hemoglobin). This kind of “corruption” in blood leads to deprivation of O2 in the blood stream, eventually leading to reduced lifespan of Hb. This may be the cause of smoking-induced Hb fragility. In spite of the above well known facts, there is no technique or instrument to quantify the smoking induced hemoglobin (Hb) fragility. There is a need to diagnose and quantify the degree of hemoglobin fragility resulting from smoking.
Thus, a spectral method for quantifying hemoglobin fragility caused by smoking solving the aforementioned problems is desired.